


Acceptable

by Pinbones



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fellswap (Undertale), Alternate Universe - Swapfell (Undertale), Arrests, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Military, Pre-Canon, Prison, Psychological Trauma, Scars, Training, and at this point I'm too afraid to ask, brainwashing I guess, i don't know the difference between swapfell and fellswap, i don't understand how police or military or the undertale guard work, military methods as abuse tactics, military sans, mind conditioning, no ships here, side character (oc) suicide mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:02:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28171353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pinbones/pseuds/Pinbones
Summary: Six years after he was kidnapped, Papyrus has been found and returned to Lieutenant Sans. But he’s no longer the fun-loving goof that he used to be, and if Sans wants to help his brother, he’s going to have to adapt his methods.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Acceptable

They found Papyrus in a basement six years after he vanished from the streets.

Sans was the one who followed up on the tip. He was present when the seven inhabitants were led out of the house by his subordinates. Two of them were ex-military, a Drill Sergeant he didn't recognise and the last Lieutenant, who were kicked out of their positions for their ‘inhumane methods’ (as the internal court had put it). The other five were four missing persons cases and a teenager from the city nobody had reported missing. Sans's brother was one of the missing cases.

They were led out and made to stand in a line, and despite their similarities (all alike in uniform, stance, and stare) it was obvious even then that they fit into two neat categories: the broken and the defiant. Or, the dogs and the masters.

The two ex-military men were charged. The Drill Sergeant killed himself before his court date, the Lieutenant was sentenced to prison. Both made statements before their fates:

Their methods worked, they said. They crafted the perfect soldiers, they said.

Their ‘perfect soldiers’ were mostly unresponsive. Only one of them made any sound until spoken to, a low dog-whining in the back of his throat. When he attempted suicide in the hospital, nobody was surprised.

Papyrus was one of the silent ones. He responded to questions with clipped responses.

“What’s your name?”

“Papyrus, no surname, sir.”

“How long were you in there?”

“Don’t know, sir.”

“Where did you come from before all this?”

“Snowdin town, sir.”

“pap? pap, is that you?”

“Yes, sir.”

Papyrus didn’t say a thing when Sans dragged him away from the other captives and he didn’t say a word until he was home. Sans didn't remember half the stuff that came out of his own mouth, a vapid combination of bewilderment and joy that left him sounding decades younger than he was.

Captain Alphys stepped in to fill his role in processing the rest of the men. She decided against taking Sans off the case, which he was grateful for. He didn’t think he would stand for it if he'd been kicked off, not now, not when he knew what to do.

That is, he knew what to do with the two taken into custody, and he did it swiftly. Nobody seemed to know what to do with the rest.

#

Papyrus walked a few paces behind Sans the whole way home, so Sans was turning back to look at him time and time again, terrified that if he didn't keep his eyes on his brother, he'd vanish again. Papyrus walked slow, hunched, head down. His legs were automatic, but not following the familiar old path home in his memories. He was following Sans's heels.

It was an immeasurable relief to arrive home. It was the same house — even alone, Sans had outgrown this old bachelor pad, but he couldn't let their home go.

Papyrus didn't step forwards to fling open the front door like Sans had daydreamed of for six years. Instead he stood behind Sans, hands loose by his sides and head down.

Sans opened the door. Papyrus followed.

#

The kidnapped five all received psychotherapy, but results were not coming easy. None of them responded to anything but the simplest of questions and not one of them had anything negative to say about their experiences. Sans swiped a transcript from one of the psychotherapist's other patients and read a page.

_Dr.: How are you feeling?_

_Client: Fine, sir._

_Dr.: You don’t have to refer to me as sir._

_Client: (No response.)_

_Dr.: Any nightmares?_

_Client: No, sir._

_Dr.: Did you sleep?_

_Client: No, sir. Sorry, sir._

_Dr.: What’s preventing you from sleeping? Fear, anxiety, distractions?_

_Client: (No response.)_

_Dr.: Let’s rephrase that. What would help you sleep?_

_Client: I need permission to sleep._

Sans didn’t have much hope.

Four of the captives had family, one was taken care of in the hospital. Papyrus moved back into his old home with Sans, of course. They tried to assimilate themselves back into their old life. That is, Sans tried. Papyrus didn’t do much of anything.

Sans spent a lot of time that first night on the phone to various Guards, and almost an hour on the line with Captain Alphys. During that time, Papyrus stood with his back to the wall in the living room, until Sans found him and pointed at the couch. Papyrus sat, hunched, hands on his knees, and continued doing nothing.

When Sans finally put the phone down and capped his pen, he found Papyrus in the same place, blank and stiff as a tin soldier.

“hungry?”

“Yes, sir,” he replied immediately.

The words would be familiar in another monster’s mouth, but here, being spoken by Papyrus, they were bizarre to the point of being obscene.

“don’t call me that,” he snapped.

Papyrus flinched. “Sorry s… Sans.”

Sans stared at him while he chewed that over, another rotten morsel to be cleared from his plate. Papyrus curled up under his gaze. He made no move to go to the kitchen.

Sans prompted, “let’s get some food.”

Papyrus rose and followed, no grin, no pep, no jokes. Sans leaned against the counter, rubbed his face, and groaned.

#

The ex-Lieutenant’s removal from his role had created the power vacuum Sans had stepped up to fill. To be honest, that was all that kept him going when his brother disappeared. His job and its many responsibilities kept him busy, stopped him from thinking about that one little clip of CCTV footage that had come from the investigation. (He hadn’t been allowed on the investigation officially. Captain’s orders. He'd known she was doing the right thing by that, but they hadn’t been friends since.)

The case was cracked by a single domestic violence tip from a new neighbour. (The last neighbour had made five complaints over a four-year period and not one had been followed up on. Makes you think.)

And then Pap was back, six years after Papyrus’s fated trip to what used to be the Crabapple bar before Sans ripped it apart law by law and board by board. (It hadn’t felt like revenge. Not satisfying. No closure.) Six whole years and Pap reappeared again, got slotted back into Sans’s life between working hours and sleeping hours, overstuffing what little time he had to himself to think and rest with this new (old) task that felt like pushing a boulder up a hill.

And Papyrus was nothing like he used to be.

He wasn’t taller, though he had grown. He was almost perpetually stooped over from the low ceiling in the basement he’d matured in. His spine curved, his neck had a crick, and his skull jutted forwards. He was leaner than he used to be, nowhere near as soft, and he carried himself with the hesitant clippedness of a beaten soul. And the cracks. He was more crack than bone when he was led out of that house, and even after several professional healing sessions, jagged lines marred his face and arms. The back of his ribcage was covered in chips and gouges, like someone had taken an axe to his back every other night.

Sans regretted asking, “how’d you get the marks on your back?”

“Punishments.”

A chilling word that sat in Sans’s mind for months.

#

Lieutenant Ducon wasn’t in chains when Sans visited him in custody. Chains were reserved for fighters. (That’s why none of the five were in chains when we found them, Sans registered numbly.)

“Ah, my replacement. Lieutenant Sans, isn’t it?”

“it is.” Sans remained standing.

“How’re my recruits doing?” His smile was too confident, too self-assured. Sans's claws twitched behind his back.

“you mean the captives you took?”

“Yes, the five young men.”

“they are recovering.”

“From?” His smile became lightly puzzled.

“your treatment of them. they have wounds, mental and physical.”

Ducon huffed air from his nose. (A military man's eye-roll.) “When they’ve rested, they’ll be getting back to training, yes?”

He really thought any of them would be enlisted? Sans laughed hollowly. “no. never.”

The Lieutenant's smile disappeared.

“Those men are perfect for duty,” he snapped. “They are the fruits of a perfect method. We moulded them ourselves for years.”

“not a very time-effective method, then.” Sans relished the twitch of Ducon’s lip. “not one of them will ever see service.”

Lieutenant Ducon looked just as pained as he had looked on the day of his firing. His face twisted. “You… can’t. You can’t waste years of work.”

“oh, worse than waste. we’re reversing it.”

Ducon was speechless. His knuckles scraped the harsh wood of the table and began to bleed. His assigned guards stepped forward and grabbed his arms before he could raise his fists.

That, sitting there and taking that in. That felt like revenge. 

#

The ‘if onlys’ were torture. They always had been, back when Sans thought his brother was dead, and had believed that for at least five and a half years. The ‘if onlys’ didn’t vanish when the case was finally closed; if anything, they multiplied.

If only one of his buddies had responded to his drunken texts to hang out. If only Sans hadn’t let him get drunk in the first place and leave the house stumbling over himself. If only that one little three-second piece of CCTV had caught more than an arm.

There were more now. If only those two hadn’t been fired. If only the guards had followed up sooner. If only we knew how to help.

#

Papyrus didn’t look at Sans the way Sans looked at him. No joy, no fascination, no… whatever other words could possibly summarise the feeling of seeing his brother again after all these years. Relief, terror. Tooth-grinding constant stress. Anything. Papyrus didn’t look like anything anymore. When he flinched, it was devoid of the natural passion of self-preservation, just a hollow shell of an instinctual twitch.

Sans remembered the first time Papyrus ate in the house since the ordeal. (That’s what it was. An ordeal — not a tragedy, he wouldn’t believe it was a tragedy. Dust would have been a tragedy. Sans’s brother was alive.)

Sans glanced in while he was on the phone and saw Papyrus make himself a meal. Not quite a meal. He took a single old roll of bread from a bag of four and put it on a plate, no butter or filling. Before he ate the dry roll, he fastened the packaging and put it back in the cupboard and Sans had a leap of heart — that right there, he thought, was a piece of Young Papyrus. Young Papyrus would also have made sure the kitchen was tidy before he ate, even if it meant sweeping up crumbs twice.

But then Papyrus didn’t eat, and that familiarity deflated.

Papyrus waited, not eating, sat hunched on a stool in front of the plate with its one sad roll.

He sat up straight when Sans entered the kitchen. He placed his hands flat at either side of his plate, like this was a shakedown.

“that all you’re eating?”

“Yes…” The ‘sir’ was still there, just silent.

Sans sighed. The distance between them was palpable, a brick wall, or a vast and yawning chasm. Sans had no idea how to close this gap.

_(Client: I need permission to sleep.)_

“eat it, then.”

He ate it like a dog, head twitching, neck hunched protectively. Sans didn’t try to grab the plate to see if he’d bite. He left the room and made another call.

#

Sans had two ideas. One of them came from the psychologist the guard recommends victims to.

The office was small and kitschy, just a home office in the guy's house. Sans could hear his young daughter argue with her mother through the office walls. Sans stepped up to his desk, trying to imagine Papyrus in this room. Trying to imagine Papyrus anywhere.

The doctor pulled down thick glasses. "You are Papyrus's brother, yes?"

“i am. thank you for meeting me.”

They shook hands like equals, then the doctor opened his folder and spoke like an expert while Sans nodded along. He didn’t remember much of the discussion except a lot of big words about discussing emotions and the guy’s disarmingly gentle smile that dissuaded any attempt to confront him.

He did remember the end of the talk.

“He needs love, that’s what he needs, now more than ever. We all do, and it’s what he really needs in order to heal.”

It’s all he got from the talk.

#

Sans did try. Let no one say that he didn’t try.

The first attempt (the first of many) was to watch TV with him. Papyrus watched the screen, but he didn't respond to Sans’s one-sided conversation. Sans told him about everything that happened in the six years he was gone, which wasn’t much, and rambled on about what they could do now with the few scraps he remembered from the meeting with the psychologist. About the healing he’d secure for him in their future, both for the visible cracks and the invisible ones. About teaching him to talk freely again. The sitcom ended and another started, one Sans had never seen before. They let it play.

"tell me about what happened," he implored, and he would be humiliated if someone were to play those words back to him in a recording. So much like begging.

Papyrus didn't shrug like the brat he used to be, or roll his eyes or swear, and he certainly didn't talk. He did nothing, that's what he did.

Sans forced clumsy words out. “papyrus, i love you.” He tried to put his heart into it, but it felt flat to Sans. “do you know that?”

“Yes.”

“alright.” He waited for reciprocity and received nothing. “ _talk_ to me, paps.”

“What about?”

“what happened to you. what you need. anything.”

“I don’t need anything, sir.”

At the _sir_ , both of them withered.

#

Lieutenant Ducon was in chains this time. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again.”

Sans swallowed his pride and sat across from him, as he had many years ago as a recruit. “ducon. the duke, we called you. we were heartbroken when you were thrown out.”

Lieutenant Ducon’s mouth moved but no sound came out.

“i’ve been looking over your latest work and i’m quite impressed with one of your recruits…”

The smile that spread across Ducon's face made Sans's soul pound with hate. “Ah, the lizard monster?”

“no. papyrus is his name. no surname.”

Ducon frowned. “That one’s just a mutt. A very obedient one,” he offered. “But I can’t say he’d make an impressive soldier.”

Sans shrugged. “forget him, then. no method is absolute. speaking of, i want to know those methods. i haven’t been having much success with my men.”

Lieutenant Ducon smiled and shared all he knew about conditioning troops.

#

Sans fired the psychologist and took some time off to work on Papyrus.

The steps were simple enough. They just took a certain type of strength that Sans had built up over years of overseeing troops. It was tough on both of them, but it worked.

He began by telling Papyrus to clean the floor of the kitchen.

“on your feet."

Papyrus sprang off the couch without hesitation.

"the floor, in the kitchen. grab a bucket and a cloth. clean until it’s spotless.”

Papyrus came to life when he heard the command. He grabbed the bucket from under the sink and filled it, grabbed a cloth and dipped and wrung it, and set to work.

Sans folded his arms and watched him clean, ready to point out any missed spot or sign of laziness. He couldn't see any.

When Papyrus had cleaned the whole thing corner to corner, Sans sent him to stand by the wall. Sans walked around the kitchen, eyeing the floor from different angles. The light caught some rag-smears.

“look at this. look at this shit.” He knelt and jabbed a finger at the smears. “looks like it was wiped with a cumrag.”

Papyrus curled in on himself, but there was no blankness. There was an understanding.

“Sorry, sir… ”

“i can’t take another ‘sir’ from you. how will you refer to me?”

“As Sans?”

“try again, mutt.”

Papyrus hesitated. Then he nodded. “Yes, my lord. Sorry, my lord.”

“clean it again.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Papyrus got back on all fours and scrubbed the floor again. He put his back into it, and soon the floor looked newer than when it was put in.

Sans examined his work with a critical eye. Every nook, every cranny, every corner. He found a touch of grime where the fridge met the floor.

“what’s this? did you even try over here?” He wiped a finger under the fridge and examined it. “it’s filthy.”

“Sorry, my lord.”

“clean it.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Papyrus scrubbed under the fridge until the bottom of it shone. Never one to half-ass a job, he pulled off the fridge magnets, wiped the fridge down, cleared away the smears, and replaced the magnets in the same spots he used to put them.

Sans eyed the rest of the room. “there. look at the skirting. that look clean to you?”

“No, my lord.”

“well? what are you waiting for, letter from the queen? clean it.”

Papyrus changed the bucket-water and wiped six years’ dust and grime from the skirting boards. Then the walls, which turned out two shades lighter, and the hobs, and the counters, and the cupboard-fronts.

An hour into therapy, the kitchen was cleaner than it had been in years.

Finally, Sans nodded. “acceptable.”

The word broke Papyrus’s face into a genuine smile.

It was the first soulful Papyrus-smile he’d seen in years. (Maybe in longer than six years.)

This is Sans’s method, the Ducon method.

This is what Papyrus needed, and who is more suited to creating this environment than Sans? Who in the Underground could apply these methods with as much commitment and love?

In time, Papyrus will come to flourish. He will smile more, just like he did when he cleaned the kitchen. Sans will return to work when Papyrus settles down a little, and life will reach a new and comfortable normal. Papyrus would of course be forbidden from venturing down seedy streets anymore, not that Sans expects he'll leave the house much. He still has to be told to eat or sleep, but Sans will get used to that. Papyrus will heal at home, on all fours.

Now, Sans knows exactly how to tell his brother that he loves him, and it begins with a command and ends with _acceptable_.


End file.
